I was reading a NY Times piece, as usual, criticizing Trump[1].
It does get a bit long in the tooth but alas one must be patient with those of
such limited resources. Then, add to this, the BBC has a discussion on le Carre's
descriptives of MI6, the equivalent, if one stretches it, of the CIA[2].
The BBC notes the terms for Americans as:
Mothers – the typists and secretaries for senior MI6
officials.
Now Mothers in MI6 were a bit more than just that. You see,
the Brits knew very well that operatives were often childlike, demanding, and
ego driven, yet wanting for care and attention, and even more so control. Thus,
one did not need an "office wife", as the NY Times so aptly asserts,
but Mothers. The "hand that rocks the cradle" and all that stuff you
know. One must have spent a bit of time in the land of the Queen to best understand
just how this works. One does not need or want an "office wife", yet
many of these folks need a "mother". A "mother" in this
context has power, authority, respect, and can effect things that otherwise
would just run amok. Mothers can over-rule, mothers can direct and govern,
mothers are the Type A controls for a Type A personality. Furthermore,
"mothers" are those points at which remediation of mess-ups can be
attained. If there is a problem at a higher level, the lower level folks can go
to "mother" to get things back aright again. You see,
"mothers" are essential to the balancing act of complex
organizations.
A few Presidents had "mothers". Just a few. Mothers
are powerful figures, especially in an MI6 environment, dotted with Oxbridge boys,
a very class based society, smart but with a bit of arrogance. Unlike our CIA
which has become at times more akin the Department of Agriculture than a want
to be MI6 as it was in the le Carre times.
Did the CIA ever have its mothers? Not really, too
un-American as the old boys would say. I also fear that too many American
Presidents had let us say relationships that were anything but
"motherly". Let us then leave the Kennedy, Clinton and others not to
be mentioned. Yet, I do recall how my Russian partners would spark up when we
had a problem and I told them to speak with "mother". They not only
understood, but smiled because they clearly knew that "mother" would
solve it for them. I thus often wondered if in Le Carre's world the KGB had its
own version of "mothers", for it appeared as if they did.
Thus, perhaps instead of a "House Wife", as the
Times suggests, what is really needed is a "House Mother", that
stable hand to rock the unstable cradle.
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